Protests throw tear gas at police in Kashmir. The disputed region has reportedly had more than 100 internet shutdowns in the last six years

Getty Images / Daniel Berehulak / Staff

The riot was triggered by rumours a 14-year-old girl had been attacked. On August 25, hundreds of people took to the streets of the small Indian district of Banda, part of the Northern region of Shahjahanpur, in protest at reports a guard had hit her when she tried to set up her market stall outside the local Gurdwara. The action prompted anger from the local Sikh and Hindu communities who faced off.

Stones were thrown by the two groups, damaging cars and injuring 12 people. Police officers in helmets and body armour fired tear gas into the crowd to try and regain control. The incident was captured by mediareports and eyewitness recordings. Days later, police brought charges of rioting, damage to public property and arson against 70 people. A peacekeeping meeting between the two religious communities was also held. Then, on August 27, local authorities ordered a shutdown of mobile internet connections in the area from 06:00 until 14:00 to stop the spread of online rumours about the alleged attack and subsequent unrest. But the real target of the shutdown wasn’t the internet as a whole, it was WhatsApp.

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Fake news and misinformation are intrinsically linked with WhatsApp in India. With 200 million monthly active users, India is WhatsApp’s biggest market. It is also one of its most problematic. During the last year more than 30 deaths have been linked to rumours circulated through the messaging app. In June 2018 eight people were killed after rumours spread through the app about alleged child kidnappers.

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"WhatsApp is so important to India’s everyday life," says Allie Funk a research analyst at NGO Freedom House. WhatsApp groups are used to rapidly spread news of what’s happening in local communities and messages are forwarded to multiple users at once. WhatsApp messages have been blamed for creating violent mobs – not unlike the one in Shahjahanpur – that have targeted individuals following the rapid spread of images and videos.

As a result, India has found itself in the unenviable position of being a world-leader when it comes to internet shutdowns. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), based in New Delhi, has tracked down 116 internet shutdowns across India in 2018 alone. In 2017, it counted reports of 79 shutdowns; in 2016, that figure was just 31 and in 2012 it was just three. The rise from three shutdowns in 2012 to more than 100 this year marks a 3,766 per cent surge. Analysts say the shutdowns have cost India billions of dollars and damaged the country’s online reputation. India's restrictions on internet access are increasingly being blamed on rumours, fake news and misinformation. And in India, fake news spreads on WhatsApp.

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"Provocative audio and video messages were getting shared on social media sites," local district magistrate Amrit Tripathi told The Times of India after the street mob formed in Shahjahanpur. "The rumour about the death of an injured girl could have disrupted the peaceful environment," Tripathi continued. As part of the police investigation, three people were arrested for sharing messages on WhatsApp, including one group administrator.

Shutdowns based on the spread of fake news and rumours are happening across India. In August, internet connections in the Pune district of Maharashtra were shutdown to "prevent rumour-mongering" after protests. In Manipur in July, the spread of rumours via social media was also blamed for a temporary internet blackout. Back in 2016 the internet was shut off in Bihar after a video showing a Hindu god being desecrated went viral. Othermediareports have also linked internet shutdowns to social media and the spread of misinformation. When they shut down the internet, Indian authorities aren’t taking aim at broadband connections, they’re aiming their censorship squarely at mobile data connections.

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"Internet shutdown is the favourite go to mechanism to handle fake news," says Rajeev Chandrasekhar an MP in India's upper house, the Rajya Sabha. Around 500 million people in India are online, second only to China. But internet penetration is still low, with the Pew Research Center finding that only one in four adults in India use the internet. But with cheap data plans and mobile phones bringing more people online, the way information spreads around India is changing. Authorities have not directly blamed WhatsApp for internet shutdowns, preferring to use the broader term of social media – of which WhatsApp and Facebook are by far the biggest.

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A spokesperson for WhatsApp refused to comment on the platform’s part in internet shutdowns in India. “The challenge of mob violence requires government, civil society, and technology companies to work together,” the spokerson said. “The police also use WhatsApp to discuss investigations and report crimes.”

The control of the internet is largely left to the police and officials in India's states and regions. Chandrasekhar says law enforcement has failed to keep up with the country’s increasing connectivity. As a result, when violence or unrest occurs, they pull the plug on the internet to try and restore order. "When the conventional police is unable to use any new tools to deal with it they often resort to internet shutdown,” Chandrasekhar says.

According to the SFLC's internet shutdowns tracker, the disputed northern region of Jammu and Kashmir has seen the most blackouts (108 since 2012) and Rajastjan (56) is in second place. Both areas are often marred by violent outbursts which reportedly lead to the shutdowns. One anonymous law enforcement official from Kashmir, taking part in research around shutdowns, said provocative images shared on Facebook and WhatsApp often mobilise crowds. Fake pictures or videos of militant encounters are also often shared on the social networks, the official said.

"Any time there's going to be a protest, whether peaceful or not, the first thing the authorities do is shut the internet down so there's no communication," a spokesperson for the SFLC says. Shutdowns rarely last more than 72 hours but the rise in their frequency is worrying. Local governments justify internet outages through the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services Rules, which were introduced in August 2017. (Previously Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was used for controlling the internet). These new rules outline some basic procedures around who can order shutdowns and say a review process must take place, although emergency situations let authorities dodge around such checks.

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Violence is commonly given as justification for India’s internet shutdowns, but it’s not the only reason. "Officially, the government gives a range of justifications for the shutdowns from public order to preventing cheating on exams," Funk says. In July this year the internet was turned off in Rajasthan to stop potential police recruits from cheating in entrance exams.

Despite the new rules, there remains a lack of transparency around when and why the internet is shut off. News that blackouts are happening mostly surface through local media reports and named officials rarely give statements or answer questions. The SFLC spokesperson says their conversations with police around internet shutdowns often result in them justifying the actions as a way to help keep peace in local communities.

Orders from local authorities to turn the internet off are served directly to telecommunications companies and researchers say the people affected by them often don’t know they’re happening. This lack of transparency means it’s impossible to know how many internet shutdowns have actually happened. Using India’s Right To Know Act – equivalent to Freedom of Information laws – the SFLC has uncovered unreported shutdowns and the motivation behind them. It found 26 unreported shutdowns in Rajasthan, all of which have happened since the 2017 rules were introduced. Other regions have refused requests for detailed information about when they have turned the internet off. The official documents from Rajasthan claim religious events, social media, communal tensions and the spread of a viral video following the death of a teengaer caused them to turn off internet access.

“We've seen in our research the underlying intention is to prevent the dissemination of information in a manner that the government can't control,” Funk says. “The issues of rumours, of fake news and misinformation are a serious problem.”

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In July, India's Ministry of Electronics and IT said WhatsApp allowed the "repeated circulation of such provocative content" and that it had “deep disapproval” of the firm allowing rumours to spread. It also called messages spread on WhatsApp "fake", "sensational" and claimed the spread of false information was a "menace".

Following criticism, WhatsApp has limited message forwarding in India to five contacts at a time. It has also paid for print and radio advertising campaigns focussed on the risks of fake news. Senior officials, including CEO Chris Daniels have visited India and the Facebook-owned company has hired a US-based grievance officer to handle complaints from the 200m users in India. A help page, which is only available within the country, includes the contact details of a WhatsApp grievance officer to contact if people have questions about their accounts. Separate guidance is given for police. WhatsApp is also hiring a public policy manager in India.

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“For us, most of what you call fake news is originating on WhatsApp and not really on other major platforms," says Sarvjeet Singh, the executive director of the University of Delhi's Centre for Communication Governance. He predicts that around 80 per cent of shutdowns he has seen recently are the result of misinformation spreading on social media and WhatsApp leading to riots and clashes. In May 2017, David Kaye, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression, criticised India’s internet shutdowns calling them a “collective punishment”.

The increase in internet shutdowns is having a huge impact on India. A report from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations says there were around 16,315 hours of internet shutdowns between 2012 and 2017, costing the country an estimated $3.04 billion. The vast majority of shutdowns targeted mobile internet connections rather than broadband.

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"Since rumour-mongering is considered one of the primary reasons for a shutdown, effectively addressing the root of the problem with counter-speech narratives is important," the Indian Council report concluded. It added that as a “significant number of internet shutdowns have been ordered to control the spread of inflammatory messages, hate speech and rumours” there should be greater efforts to teach people about fake news. Separate analysis from the Centre for Internet & Society details the impact internet shutdowns have had on individuals. The research was co-funded by Facebook and calls many of the internet shutdowns around India "ill-intentioned" and "ill-informed".

Facebook’s research division has offered grants to researchers who may be able to help it solve its WhatsApp misinformation problem. The scheme, which specifically mentions India, is looking for ways to understand what is being shared on the platform without breaking encryption. WhatsApp is currently reviewing proposals and plans to issue grants for the research in the coming weeks.

Such efforts are unlikely to cause an immediate decline in internet shutdowns in India. "Google and Facebook and WhatsApp and some of the other messenger platforms have to do a lot more as intermediaries than they were doing in the past," says Chandrasekhar. He says the work they have started has been promising, but doesn’t go far enough. Chandrasekhar, a former telecoms executive and senior design engineer at Intel who became an MP in 2006, is an ardent supporter of a free an open internet, but concedes that, for the time being, the shutdowns are a necessary evil. "I think when there is a serious security problem internet shutdowns will be used," he says. "Even the purest, most utopian free internet advocate like me will have no option but to support it."